The Energon Pub

[Emerje]

This past weekend at Wonder Festival 2023 [Winter] as part of the AmiAmi Hobby Camp display Flame Toys showed off an early look at a new addon for their 2020 take on IDW G1 Optimus Prime from their Kuro Kara Kuri high-end figure line. The "Jet Power Armor" set is very similar to what we saw in the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen movie and even features scratched up silver Decepticon symbols. Flame Toys doesn't do movie figures so this is probably more of a homage than anything. There are no details given like price and date, though it should be pointed out that Optimus himself goes for around US$450 and stands 210mm or 8.27". While these figures don't transform there is a chance that the jet armor can be reassembled into a jet mode similar to what they did with their Victory Leo figure.

Images below come from Dengeki Hobby Web and Flame Toys on Twitter.

[-Kanrabat-]

This looks like a huge mess for me. It's over-saturated with so much details, I have no idea what I'm looking at.

Also, I've yet to build both my Bee and Windblade kits.

[First-Aid]

I am firmly convinced the guys designing the Kuro Kara Kuri figs are compensating for something. #GiantCodpieceSyndrome

Seriously, if a patient came in to my office like that, I'd tell him to ice that package until the swelling went down....

[Bumblevivisector]

Yeah, if the article hadn't said it was some sort of IDW-G1/ROTF mashup, I'd have guessed it was a TF/Gurren Lagann crossover...that wasn't Dirt Boss.

[D-Maximal_Primal]

That is awesome looking. Glad it finally got revealed

[-Kanrabat-]

I finally, finally went and built Windblade.

And oh boy, it was NOT fun. The instructions were hard to read. It's full of tiny, tiny parts that are not butter-fingers friendly. Some parts required crazy glue in order to not pop off. I fuktd the connector ring in her left harm so I had to do some serious customizing to fix the mess. The stickers are too tiny and too fragile. I had to improvise with a cutter knife and some Reprolabels leftovers to fix things.

And for what?

FOR WHAT?

The most tiny...
And detailed... and beautiful... and posable Windblade figure ever!

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To optimize her posing, she need a stand.
Overall the final results were worth the trouble.

Now to build my Bumblebee.

[Ravage XK]

Yep, fiddly but worth it.

Agree about the stand, I got another waiting for Arcee.

[Fires_Of_Inferno]

I finally, finally went and built Windblade.

And oh boy, it was NOT fun. The instructions were hard to read. It's full of tiny, tiny parts that are not butter-fingers friendly. Some parts required crazy glue in order to not pop off. I fuktd the connector ring in her left harm so I had to do some serious customizing to fix the mess. The stickers are too tiny and too fragile. I had to improvise with a cutter knife and some Reprolabels leftovers to fix things.

And for what?

FOR WHAT?

The most tiny...
And detailed... and beautiful... and posable Windblade figure ever!

20230702_133203.jpg

20230702_133302.jpg

20230702_133343.jpg

To optimize her posing, she need a stand.
Overall the final results were worth the trouble.

Now to build my Bumblebee.

Pretty much my experience building her too. Slow process, tiny parts, frustratingly small stickers, some parts broke due to my giant hands, instructions not clear got my d**k stuck in the ceiling fan. But the final product is something that I still have on my desk. It turned out really well and for my first kit from them it made me want more. I've eyeing up their Devastator and really want to track one down, I love what they did with Hound, and I am DROOLING for that Leo Prime. The Arcee is a little disappointing because it's the same base body so it means the same frustrating build process, but I still want her.

[D-Maximal_Primal]

Devastator is a very good kit. He is my favorite of the kits released so far, despite strong competition from Megatron.

[King Kuuga]

I decided to look at this thread from the beginning and there's several comments from years ago that have not aged well.

To be quite honest, if there was any character to get this treatment, Tarn is the perfect choice as I doubt a character as defined by, uh... ahem, violent acts as him would ever get an official transforming toy from Hasbro.

In all fairness, at the time I would have agreed but I'm glad this turned out to be wrong.


Anyway, I'm not sure if I ever shared my Leo Prime build, but a few months back I picked up IDW MEgatron (the decepticon version admittedly, because it's what they had) and just got around to building him. Fun set! I'll post pics later. I'm eyeing the devastator but having a hard time committing to it..... but my birthday is coming up...

[D-Maximal_Primal]

Thanks to Flame Toys on Facebook, we have a new poster for their newest release as part of the Kuro Kara Kuri line: Shattered Glass IDW Bomber Megatron!

This new Megatron figure is a redeco of the IDW stealth Bomber Megatron figure they did, but now in the beautiful white, blue, and red of his Shattered Glass self. He cuts quite an impressive figure, and the blue glowing effects will certainly look great in person.

This figure will be limited to 1,200 units, and will likely sell for around $400.

Check out the image below, and let us know what you think!

[-Kanrabat-]

Freaking glorious, but that price ain't for everybody.

[Perceptor1996]

I could and would never buy these Kara Kuri figures, but with this being one of my favorite updates to the G1 style Megatron right behind the Animated version and being a big Shattered Glass fan. I'm at least glad to see this.

[Emerje]

Just noticed one of his weapons is G1 Megatron in his 2001 Collector's Edition black repaint, but with even more addons to configure it into a sniper rifle.




Emerje

[Lucky Logician]

He looks like a Gundam.

[Black Bumblebee]

Maybe they'll be nice and send Don a copy of the figure since neither IDW or Hasbro paid him for the design...

[King Kuuga]

Looks like we've got a few more Flame Toys Furai Models coming on the horizon. While not shown at Toy Fair this past weekend, scans uploaded to MyFigureCollection.net from what appears to be a Flame Toys catalog that might have been available at Toy Fair revealed a pair of familiar repaints. First is the Bumblebee with heli-pack kit in red coming in June. We don't get a whole lot of red recolors of Bumblebee that aren't Cliffjumper, but the repaints are pretty standard all the same. Next is our perennial Optimus Prime repaint, this time into "inner" Ultra Magnus. It's a good looking kit, but probably not quite the IDW representation most were hoping for. He'll be out sometime in August.





So what do you think about these newly revealed recolors? Good, bad or indifferent be sure to sound off in the Energon Pub forums!

I'm still going through the archives and it's kind of amazing how long some of this stuff has been in development, and has only recently come out (Windblade, Leo Prime) or hasn't come out at all (Red Bumblebee here, Optimus Primal, Big Convoy, Hound).

I'm especially surprised at this Red Bumblebee, because it's a simple recolor, and they had a sample ready for photography here. They've even made a Bug Bite in the interim of all characters. I'm really curious what the delay is.

[-Kanrabat-]

I'm especially surprised at this Red Bumblebee, because it's a simple recolor, and they had a sample ready for photography here. They've even made a Bug Bite in the interim of all characters. I'm really curious what the delay is.

There's high chances that Bee didn't sell enough so its repaint was cancelled.

[King Kuuga]

I'm especially surprised at this Red Bumblebee, because it's a simple recolor, and they had a sample ready for photography here. They've even made a Bug Bite in the interim of all characters. I'm really curious what the delay is.

There's high chances that Bee didn't sell enough so its repaint was cancelled.

Maybe, but they did Bug Bite. He seems like a more obscure choice, even if he had a contemporary appearance in Earthrise.

Anyway. I saw their tease for Beast Megatron and I want. Give me all the Beast era characters in as many lines as possible.

And as promised here's a picture of my two kits so far: Leo Prime and IDW Megatron (Decepticon version, because it's what they had at the store, it was an impulse buy)

[-Kanrabat-]

I've been sitting on that Bee for a few years.

I finally manage tu build it. The building experience was much better than Windblade, safe from 3 annoyances. That windows ball joint was extremely challenging to snap on (the joints were dancing like a snake) the shoulder bits needs a drop of crazy glue, and the waist ball joint detach too easily.

But apart that, Bee look great and he's basically a MP Action Masters Bee.

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[D-Maximal_Primal]

Bee is probably my 3rd favorite kit after IDW Megatron and Devastator, he's a good kit. Love the helicopter pack too

[Emerje]

Despite the complaints about the build experience I went ahead and pre-ordered from the second batch of Windblade kits months ago... and BBTS just cancelled saying it was "because the anticipated production run did not take place as expected, and at this time, there is no update on when or if future production will occur." That's not under produced, that's just plain they didn't make any. Weird.

Emerje

[-Kanrabat-]

Despite the complaints about the build experience I went ahead and pre-ordered from the second batch of Windblade kits months ago... and BBTS just cancelled saying it was "because the anticipated production run did not take place as expected, and at this time, there is no update on when or if future production will occur." That's not under produced, that's just plain they didn't make any. Weird.

Emerje

You're not missing much.

You may rather just buy the pre-built K.O from AliExpress. Save the hassle, save money, get a nice looking figure.

[Emerje]

Aaaaand, she's back.

This message is in regard to your pre-order of The Transformers Furai 20 Windblade Model Kit by Flame Toys. Yesterday, you may have received an email stating that your order was cancelled. This was an error on our part, and we apologize for the mistake.

Over the next few days, your order will be re-instated. You will not lose priority in receiving your product which is set to arrive in January.

Whoops! She was original due by the end of November, so I guess they hit the wrong button and called it cancelled instead of delayed.

You're not missing much.

You may rather just buy the pre-built K.O from AliExpress. Save the hassle, save money, get a nice looking figure.

In all honesty I'm so far behind on building kits I don't even know if I'll ever get around to building her anyway.

Emerje

[-Kanrabat-]

In all honesty I'm so far behind on building kits I don't even know if I'll ever get around to building her anyway.

Emerje

I still have 3 Kotobukiya 1:1 scale "bug hunters maid-bots lolis" to build. I bought them last year or the year before. I don't remember.